Friday, 19 June 2015

Multiplication

A fire believed to
have been started by Jewish extremists has badly damaged a church on the Sea of
Galilee built on the site where Christian tradition holds that Jesus performed
the miracle of feeding five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of
bread.

The Roman Catholic Church of the Multiplication of
the Loaves and Fish at Tabgha was extensively damaged “both inside and out” by
the fire, according to police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Father
Matthias Karl, a German monk from the church, told reporters that an office for
pilgrims, a souvenir shop and a meeting room were heavily damaged and bibles
and prayer books were burnt. However, the prayer area was not harmed, he said.

Words
from a Jewish prayer urging the “cutting down” of idol worshippers were daubed
in red paint on a wall outside the church. Firefighters determined that the
blaze had broken out in several places.

But Catholic leaders suggested it may have
been enabled by what they claim has been a lax Israeli policy towards such
actions in the past.

“We had incidents including at
Tabgha and Dormition Abbey where Israeli authorities didn’t do enough to stop
them, so we expected such a crime and this may continue if the authorities
don’t take concrete steps to stop it, to show they are serious in protecting
the holy places in the Holy Land,” said Father Jamal Khader, rector of the
Latin Patriarchate Seminary in Beit Jalla in the West Bank.

Last year, a group of mostly
Jewish youth attacked the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish
outdoor prayer area, pelting worshippers with stones, destroying a cross and
throwing benches into a fire, Father Karl told the Associated Press.

In January 2014, vandals
punctured the tyres of cars and scrawled anti-Christian graffiti on a
Catholic monastery at Deir Rafat, near the town of Beit Shemesh.

In May 2014, a Romanian Orthodox
church in Jerusalem was defaced with graffiti saying “Jesus is garbage”.

Shortly before that, graffiti was scrawled on the Notre Dame Centre in
Jerusalem saying: “Death to Arabs and Christians and those who hate Israel.”

In April, a Maronite Catholic
cemetery was vandalised in northern Israel.

The attacks have also targeted
mosques, with vandals four months ago setting fire to one in Jaba village near
Bethlehem. They left behind graffiti with a star of David and the word
“revenge”.

According to Tag
Meir, an Israeli anti-racism group, there have been no indictments in
connection with these attacks or 36 others against churches, monasteries and
mosques in the past three years.

“Punishing these crimes is not a
priority for the authorities,” said Yossi Saidov, a Tag Meir activist.

“The
message that comes down from the Prime Minister to the individual policeman is
that it’s all right that this happens, it’s not so terrible.”

“If 43 synagogues were attacked
in Poland and the authorities didn’t stop it, we would scream that it was
anti-Semitism and rightly so,” Mr Saidov said.

Mr Netanyahu’s office said he has
instructed the Shin Bet intelligence agency chief Yoram Cohen to carry out an
“expedited” investigation of the Tabgha fire.

Mr Netanyahu said, “This appalling
arson against a church is an attack on all of us. Freedom of worship in Israel
is one of the foundation stones of our values and is enshrined in the law.

“We
will fulfil the law against those responsible for this criminal action. Hatred
and intolerance have no place in our society.”

Mr Rosenfeld said that police
detained 16 youths from a West Bank settlement for questioning to check if they
were linked to the church attack and then released them.